It has been an excellent few weeks for Irvinestown’s Conall Mahon.

The young man is fresh from coming third place in the Triple Jump at the Irish National Senior Track and Field Championships in Athlone and Conall couldn’t be happier: “I was absolutely delighted to win a medal. It was completely unexpected and it was a great achievement for me.” Conall has become Fermanagh’s first national senior Track and Field medallist in many a long year, and it is difficult to recall the last Fermanagh athlete to take a national senior medal before Mahon’s breakthrough on Saturday afternoon.

Coming off a fine personal best in the Irish Universities Championships a few weeks previous, Mahon opened his account with a jump of 13.63m before following with a couple more jumps in the mid 13 metre range before adding a centimetre to his recent PB in round five with 13.69m. However, this still left him in fourth place going into the final round, where he produced an impressive new personal best of 14.10m to secure his illusive first national medal at senior level.

Conall is currently undertaking the second year of his Degree in Science at the National University of Ireland in Galway.

He has always had an interest in athletics and having been a student at St. Michael’s, he has experienced the thrills of competition setting before, which helped him prepare for this success.

His only national medal in his school days was a silver in the Irish Schools Junior Boys Triple Jump in 2008, while his training partners regularly struck national gold and many of them represented Ireland at under age level, but Mahon has reaped the rewards of hard work and perseverance and there is surely more to come from the NUIG student as he now moves onto the indoor season full of confidence as one of the top triple jumpers in the country at the age of just 20.

He has been part of Tír Chonaill Athletics Club in Donegal for two years now and this, along with his time at St. Michael’s, has provided the cornerstone for Conall and has given him the launch pad for success. When asked about his preperation for the Championships, Conall said: “I’ve been training six days a week since September and I’m just glad that all my hard work has paid off.” The next step for Conall is to get back to training hard for the next 2-3 months and prepare for the indoor season starting at the end of May. He added: “I would like to aim to get some new PB’s and try to win the Under 23’s Championship. I’ve never won an Irish title, so it would be good to achieve that”.